Mary’s Voter Guide 2020 President Vote for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. Obviously. Los Angeles Community College District Member of the Board of Trustee I am not endorsing these seats because I don’t know enough about education politics. MEMBER OF THE STATE ASSEMBLY 53rd District Vote for GODFREY SANTOS PLATA This is mostly a vote against Miguel Santiago. Mr. Santiago received $60K from telecom companies and then voted against Net Neutrality. He’s not terrible but I’m not happy that he’s so easily persuadable. UNITED STATES REPRESENTATIVE 34th District Vote for DAVID KIM I don’t like Jimmy Gomez, I think he’s a bit useless. Mr. Kim won’t take money from police or fossil fuels. He hasn’t taken any corporate money either. He left the DAs office and is an immigration attorney. LOS ANGELES UNIFIED SCHOOL DISTRICT - MEASURE RR Vote YES This will bring much needed funds to LAUSD. DISTRICT ATTORNEY Vote for GEORGE GASCON Mr. Gascon is not a perfect reformer, he is former Law Enforcement and does not have trial experience in the courtroom. HOWEVER he has been the DA in San Francisco County where he worked to create a great deal of reforms. He does NOT support the death penalty and will never ask for it. He wants to create a race blind system for filing charges where the race of the individuals will be hidden from the filing Deputy DA. He wants to create an independent investigatory unit for officer involved shootings so that the DA’s office will not feel pressure in having to file criminal charges against the same officers they have to rely on to bring them evidence to prove their cases. In other words he isn’t Jackie Lacey. Ms. Lacey represents old school hard on crime values. She is an entrenched part of that office and a large part of why there is such a bad climate. (If you want to read about it check out this article). The DA’s office is too close to both the LAPD and the LASD. Instead of finding truth they are too interested in protecting bad police and bad police work. They try and force pleas without any sense of trying to get “Justice” they just want a “win.” Ms. Lacey claims that her office is supporting the mentally ill but every mental health diversion motion I’ve written (where the mentally ill get treatment and then get their cases dismissed) has been opposed by her office. Ms. Lacey’s office is requesting the death penalty when the Governor has signed a moratorium on executions. Why? Because she’s old school hard on crime. Leave Ms. Lacey in the 20th century where she belongs and lets bring LA into the 21st. JUDGE OF THE SUPERIOR COURT Office No. 72 Vote for STEVE MORGAN Yes he’s a DA, but he’s find. I interviewed Ms. Dellinger and found that I did not think her temperament would be good for a judge. JUDGE OF THE SUPERIOR COURT Office No. 80 Vote for DAVID BERGER. Mr. Berger is another DA who comes highly recommended by my colleagues in Airport Courthouse. My union tried to interview Mr. McKay and he never followed up with use despite many emails on our part. Overall Mr. Berger seems to be a compassionate DA who works well with Defense and is reasonable. JUDGE OF THE SUPERIOR COURT Office No. 162 Vote for DAVID DIAMOND Mr. Diamond is a defense attorney with great experience. He interviewed with the PD union and we liked him a great deal. We need less DAs on the bench. COUNTY MEASURE J Vote YES The Board of Supervisors for LA county will devote 10% of their budge to community- based youth development, affordable housing, restorative justice, job training and similar programs. This is how you stop crime treat the root causes, poverty, education, drug addiction. STATE MEASURE 14 Vote YES I am endorsing this measure. It authorizes $5.5 billion in state bonds to fund non profit stem cell research. STATE MEASURE 15 Vote YES In 1978 Prop 13 fixed property taxes in California at the rate they were when the person bought the property. This has caused a lot of issues for education funding because that money comes from property taxes. Voting yes for this prop will roll back parts of prop 13 and use that money for education funding. Prop 13 has been used for too long as a tax shelter for commercial businesses. UNLESS you own commercial properties worth more that $3 million you’re not going to notice this. State Measure 16 Vote YES. Roll back to California’s Prop 209. Prop 209 changed California’s Constitution to add language forbidding discrimination or preferential treatment based on race, sex, color, ethnicity or national origin in public hiring, education or contracting. This prop would roll back some of that language to allow Affirmative Action. Affirmative Action allows for preferential treatment or hiring of certain minorities that have been unrepresented historically. Many courts will use anti- discrimination language to say that the government is not allow to hurt minorities, but also that they can’t help. If you’re for affirmative action vote yes. STATE MEASURE 17 Vote YES Prop 17 allows formerly incarcerated persons (aka felons) who are currently on Parole to have their voting rights restored. I’m all for this. Because formerly incarcerated persons are disproportionately people of color this would lead to a marked increase in minority voting communities. As an aside in California Felons are allowed to vote if they are off Parole or ON Probation. The only current restrictions are IN Prison or ON Parole. This prop would get rid of that last one. STATE MEASURE 18 Vote YES This measure lowers the voting age to 17 for any primary or special election IF the person would be 18 and thus eligible to vote in the next general election. Essentially lets say you turn 18 in June. You’d be allowed to vote in the March presidential primary and in November General election. STATE MEASURE 19 Vote ??? This is a very complicated new scheme for property taxes. It essentially allows seniors and disabled persons to transfer their property tax assessment rate to a new property (something that is already allowed once in a lifetime) this allows it three times. Currently there would not be a new assessment on parent child transfers, this prop would force a new assessment unless the property was being used as a primary residence in order to close this loophole. This aspect of it I don’t mind. I’m very on the fence about this one, it’s being supported by the Realtor’s association because it should increase home sales but will it help average folks buy a house? Unclear. STATE MEASURE 20 Vote NO This is an attempted roll back of criminal justice reforms from 2014’s prop 47. That made many non violent theft felonies into misdemeanors and allowed resentencing for many crimes. This prop would bring back felony “petty theft with a prior” aka if you’ve been convicted of a prior theft your next one would be charged as a felony. It would change the theft threshold, currently $950 or more is felony theft, anything below that is a misdemeanor. This would lower the threshold back to $400, means lots more felonies. It will also create harsher punishments for people who violate their parole and change who can be released as a “non violent offender.” This is an attempted roll back of criminal justice reforms. This bill is being sponsored by prosecutors, law enforcement unions and, surprisingly, grocery store unions. (They think that rings of shoplifters have been emboldened by the lower amount and are shoplifting en masse) Passing this will just lead to more people in prisons and jails, more people with felony convictions. This won’t do anything to stop any of the underlying causes of crime, like poverty, and will lead to people of color being jailed. State Measure 21 Vote YES This is a rent control measure. In 1995 an act called the “Costa-Hawkins Rental Housing Act” banned local governments from enacting rent control. Rent control is where the government can limit how much a landlord can raise rent per year on an tenant. Rent is currently out of control in Los Angeles County. We need reforms to keep people in their homes. There is going to be a massive eviction spike soon due to the Pandemic. STATE MEASURE 22 Vote NO This is an attempt by Uber and Lyft to roll back the reforms in AB 5 that forced them to treat their drivers as employees and not as independent contractors. It would give drivers benefits and would guarantee a minimum wage for their driving time. But that would still keep them below what they’d earn if they were categorized as employees. This is a silicon valley gambit to save money. It also would require a 7/8 supermajority in the legislature to overturn it, which just seems messed up. Labor Unions, drivers AND Biden/Harris have come out as NO on 22. STATE MEASURE 23 Vote YES This measure would require that there is a doctor or experienced nurse on site at dialysis clinics. Opponents say that this will force clinics to close because they won’t be able to get a doctor or nurse, but it’s probably a better safe than sorry situation. STATE MEASURE 24 Vote ??? This would expand the CCPA act of 2018 expanding internet privacy rights. It requires businesses to not share consumer’s personal info, have an opt out option for their sensitive info. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) neither supports nor condemns the prop. This is because is would expand “Pay for privacy” schemes where a business would withhold a discount from you unless you let them use your data, it places the burden on consumers to opt out of the sale of their info instead of an opt in model that would require the companies to inform their consumers. STATE MEASURE 25 Vote NO This is a vote to uphold SB 10, the cash bail reform bill. I’m a PD and I’m siding with the bail bonsdmen, why am I doing this? What is cash bail? In LA County and most of the US when you are accused of a crime you are innocent until proven guilty HOWEVER the court system will keep a person in custody “to ensure their prompt appearance” unless they can pay money to be released. In fact, California has the highest bail amounts in the nation. All of this is PENDING a trial. AKA if you don’t have enough money you will have to wait for your trial in custody. What this means, practically, is that innocent people will plead guilty to things they didn’t do just to get out of jail as quickly as possible. This is especially prevalent in misdemeanors where the prosecutor will argue against releasing someone but their offer is time served. MEANING they are ok with someone getting out of jail as long as they can strong arm a conviction. Summary? Cash bail sucks. Firstly SB 10 last year was stripped of his best reforms RIGHT before it passed. Many progressive social justice groups divorced themselves from it when that happened. What got passed was a watered down bill that gave WAY too much discretion. This bill relies heavily on a computer program with will analyze someone’s information and then give them a rating. The statute lists these ratings as “low risk” “medium risk” etc. We have been using these reports, called C-CAT reports in my court room. Firstly they are made by the probation department, who are NOT defendant friendly. Sometimes the reports are telling the judge that a person should or should not be released, which they shouldn’t be doing. Secondly the trainings I did with the folks who designed the reports state that “low risk” or “high risk” does NOT mean likely to reoffend or likely to fail to come back to court. It means someone who is in greater need of services, i.e. housing, mental health, education etc. HOWEVER that isn’t what the statute says. The statute mandates that “low risk” or “high risk” relate to that person’s likelihood to fail to appear or reoffend. What that means is that even using their own program these reports fail completely in the “objective” or “scientific” methods they proclaim to use. Thirdly, these reports are well known to be biased based on race, class and age. In fact the training I went to the trainers said that a person with no record but who is 18-20 will have a higher risk rating JUST because that is statistically the ages where most people commit crimes. This is just using crime stats against people, a system that disproportionally targets poor people and brown people cannot be used to create the system to get them out. It’s just feeding bad data into the machine expecting to get a good result. Finally, the remedy we have been seeing is essentially placing people on probation before they plead. They are getting ankle monitors and have to report to probation officers. Again this is BEFORE they have been found guilty of any crime. We are facing the choice where our homeless clients have to have an ankle monitor in order to get out of jail but they don’t have a place where they can plug in their monitor. One of the most difficult things for the homeless is having a place where they can charge their phones. Imaging having a phone AND an ankle monitor. I don’t want to side with the bail bondsmen but I have no choice. We need to end cash bail but not like this. Special Mention El Camino College Board Trustee Vote for George Turner, Jr. George works at the PD with me. He’s a good guy and originally from the South Bay, he’s from Inglewood. He went to ElCo and so did his mom. He wants to make the school the pride of the community college system in LA again. He also wants to get better educational access for students of color. I can’t vote for George cause I live downtown, but lots of South Bay people will see this and I encourage you to vote for him. California’s 33rd Congressional District Vote for TED LIEU Look, he’s standard Democrat version 25.36441 but James Bradley? He’s a Trump whack job. He said on Twitter that““Cardi B & Megan Thee Stallion are what happens when children are raised without God and without a strong father figure,” He has a photo of Ted Lieu giving a Muslim woman an award with the headline “Radical Ted” this guy is an ass.
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